As the baby-boomer generation came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, it led a broad cultural and religious reaction to traditionalism in various spheres. This is the era that brought us Woodstock and post-Vatican II guitar masses. The evangelical version of the guitar mass is the Scripture chorus. Today, however, some of the children and grandchildren of the boomers are conducting their own social and liturgical revolution: they are looking to the past. Journalist Colleen Carroll documents a significant movement by young adults (born 1965-83) toward traditional worship and piety.⁹ She notes that, in recent years, in the midst of a growing pluralism, having tried everything that secularism has to offer, many so-called Gen-Xers have already had their midlife crisis. They have seen that the writer of Ecclesiastes was fundamentally correct, that “all is vanity” (Eccl. 1:1–11). Repenting of the fast lane, they are turning to various forms of religious traditionalism (Roman and Protestant). Though some are following the boomer pattern of contemporary worship services, a remarkable number of postboomers are demanding preaching and worship that are substantial, confessional, and mysterious.¹⁰ Renewed interest in the past is also manifesting itself in the emerging and emergent church movements and especially in their eclectic use of the past. According to Randall Balmer and Lauren Winner, the trend toward contemporary worship has competition.

Many Protestant congregations, even those with decidedly low-church pedigrees, are also appropriating liturgy in their worship. In so doing, they not only connect with historic creeds and traditions, they attract a new generation of churchgoers, many of whom have grown weary of the contemporary worship styles that dominate the baby-boomer megachurches.¹¹

Balmer and Winner attribute this movement among evangelicals to a lessened suspicion of their Roman Catholic neighbors.

For confessional Reformed folk (a category missing from their analysis), however, the use of read prayers and Genevan robes is less the latest novelty and more a return to form.¹² Perhaps then it is a propitious time for Reformed folk to reconsider their past as well, since we also have something of considerable worth to offer to those looking for an alternative to the reigning evangelical paradigms. Our theology, piety, and practice were confessed before us and transmitted to us by others. It is, therefore, a tradition that we have received. Tradition is not simply an extracanonical idea, however, but a biblical concept. In the New Testament “tradition” (paradosis) occurs thirteen times. Sometimes it is used negatively, as in Matthew 15:2–6, where Jesus rebukes the Pharisees and the teachers of the law for placing “the traditions of the elders” above the authority of God’s law, thereby effectively circumventing the intent of the law.¹³ Paul likewise referred disparagingly to the “traditions” of his “fathers” in a similar way (Gal. 1:14). He also correlated the “traditions of men” to “vain and deceptive philoso-phy” and the “basic principles of this world,” and these he juxtaposed to Christ and his gospel (Col. 2:8). In each of these cases, he uses “tradition” to describe a moralistic, self-justifying approach to God in distinction from the Christ-centered gospel of justification and salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

In other places, however, “tradition” is used favorably in the New Testament. The apostle Paul congratulated the Corinthian church for getting at least one thing right: they remembered Paul “in everything” and held to the “traditions” just as he had passed them on to the church (1 Cor. 11:2). In 2 Thessalonians 2:14–15 the apostle even used “tradition” as a synonym for the good news. Scripture says that God efficaciously called the Thessalonian Christians to faith “through our gospel.” It is to this same gospel that Paul refers when he tells them to “stand firm and hold to the traditions we passed on to you” (2 Thess. 2:15). Tradition also refers to Paul’s moral teaching. In the same epistle he says, “We command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the tradition you received from us” (2 Thess. 3:6). In this case, the tradition is simple and clear: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat’ ” (2 Thess. 3:10). In either case, it is clear that Paul was not averse to describing his teaching, whether law or gospel, as a “tradition,” that is, a body of theological or moral instruction that was to be received and considered authoritative and binding. Certainly, for confessional Protestants, there is a sharp distinction to be made between the apostolic tradition and subsequent, postcanonical Christian tradition. Nevertheless, it would seem difficult to reject tradition as unbiblical or even unhelpful, since we get the very notion from Scripture itself.

Notes

9. “Colleen Carroll, The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy (Chicago: Loyola, 2002). See also Robert E. Webber, The Younger Evangelicals: Facing the Challenges of the New World (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), 77–80. Christian Smith, however, paints a less optimistic picture of the spiritual state of American teenagers. See Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Though American teenagers are interested in spiritual things, they are inarticulate about the faith largely because their congregations have refused to teach them anything of substance.”
10. One finds a similar approach in Marva J. Dawn, Reaching Out without Dumbing Down: A Theology of Worship for the Turn-of-the-Century Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995).
11. Randall Balmer and Lauren F. Winner, Protestantism in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 202.
12. “On the omission of confessional Protestants as an analytical category, see Hart, The Lost Soul of American Protestantism, xv–xxxiv. Perhaps, because the study of American Protestantism has omitted confessionalism as a historical category, we who should be confessionalists find it difficult to think of ourselves as such since the category is not yet widely used.”
13. See F. F. Bruce, Tradition, Old and New (Exeter: Paternoster, 1970), 19–28.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Recovering the Reformed Confession by R. Scott Clark, pages 5–8. To continue reading, please consider ordering the complete book from the publisher or on Amazon.

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He is professor emeritus of church history and historical theology at Westminster Seminary California, where he taught for 29 years. He also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007 and the Heidelcast since 2009.

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